[Resolved]  Travel Chacha — Travel ChaCha Fraud Travel Portal

I booked 2 tickets on travelchacha.com web portal for travel on 7th and 18th Sep 2010 on Kingfisher airlines for my parents. Travelchacha deducted the full amount from my credit card for the bookings but failed to send me any PNR number. I waited till 7th Aug and then started sending them a mail about the PNR number.
Till today I've not got the PNR number of the flight. I tried checking the status of the bookings from Kingfisher directly and they said that they will NOT be operating this flight.
My complaints to travelchacha are the following:
* Junk numbers: It is impossible to reach them. I tried all their numbers I even tried the toll free numbers listed for US and Canada and tried even their fax numbers. For the first time today I reached them at 41544154 and the lady cooly said that they will issue the ticket no matter what by 17th. They need to provide accurate contact numbers on their portal
* No responses of email: All I got from them till now for 7 of my mails was sir don't worry your ticket is confirmed we have technical issues so can't issue your ticket right now. They need to be responsive and responsible in dealing with their customers.
* Now I'm keeping my fingers crossed and really don't know whether I should make alternate arrangements for my parents or wait for the tickets to confirm. They need to be transparent enough to let the customers know the reality. When kingfisher will not operate on the route how can they guarantee the e-ticket?

I'm planning to send somebody to their office in Delhi to do the fighting on my behalf to either get the tickets or get the refund.

hi all,

travelchacha is not a fraud company.

I had booked my tickets for travel on 25th august 2010 on spicejet airlines.

I am a regular customer of travelchacha.com & only for this time i have faced delay in processing of my tickets.

Yes, it is true that their process of generating e-tickets is running slow for this time, but they had given me my tickets before the date of departure. so i can say that they are not a fraud company.

I think they are correct that their is some technical problem is going on in their server.

regards
Sakshi

Same problem here. My tickets are for 6th of September for the return journey and they have not confirmed yet. And unfortunately even if they confirm at the last minute i have no way to take a printout since i will on a trip abroad where i have no access to it. Imagine looking for a internet center in the jungles of Kenya.

I agree there is no confirmation till date i had booked my tickets for Sep12 and i called the customer care today there are so rude all the say is u will get the tickets in next 2 days.

Hi all,

surprisingly, I would like to share my experience with travelchacha.com

I had booked two airline tickets for 25th September 2010 for delhi to mumbai. I had made the payment online & simultanously i received PNR number & e-ticket.

I am shocked to see such a reviews on consumer forums about travelchacha.com because i have not faced any problem in processing of my tickets. There might be some problem in the past, but now i think that they are working smoothly on customer enquiries.

regards
Vibha saxena

Hi all,

I just want to share my experience with all of you, i have seen some bad reviews about travelchacha.com, but one of my friend suggested that it is a good & affordable company.

So, i booked few airlines tickets from them & it was really a good experience. I got air tickets at cheapest rates. According to my opinion travelchacha is affordable travel portal & have best offers.

so, won't trust on these bad reviews about travelchacha, go & check yourself.


regards
Vikas

hi,

As I was searching over the net for cheapest online flight booking site, I have cross checked with many travel portals & travelchacha has lowest rates among the all. So, I booked my 2 tickets for delhi - bangalore.

Also, i was quiet sacred about getting tickets done as i have seen few negative reviews about travelchacha.com

But i have got the tickets on time.

regards
Anup

hi,

Greetings!

This is to share with all of you that i have booked flight tickets from travelchacha.com in the month of august 2010 & at that time company is facing some technical problem in their portal. So, i won't got my tickets on time.

But i got my full refund & as i had promised to write this thing clear about the company on net, so i am posting this comment. They kept their promises.



thanks
vishal

The problem seems to be ok now, I have just issued although there were negative postings about travelchacha.com on various websites. I used to be a reguar customer of them 1 year back. And it seems they are back again with even better services. But for tours, hotels & other services they always have good rates with very helping, supportive staffs.

actually problem is with there system only, they do not have any online booking system which can generate instant PNR number for flights, actually due to cost and manpower constraint they can only display flight price on there sight with other information, and it look like online booking. so when you click on book now they will deduct the price from your bank, and then book ticket manually that's why they are facing so many complaints of not receipts of e-ticket.

they are making false thing on there site, there is no online booking system like yatra, or make my trip

To begin with the itinerary for the tour I took (Classic Rajasthan) was rather scant on detail (first red flag). When I pressed the tour operator for more details he provided scant two sentence emails in response. The operator prior to and during the tour was otherwise responsive to my requests and complaints, and even accommodated a change in tour dates some days out from the scheduled tour. Local tour representatives were helpful in assisting me with any inquiries. I was not however provided with accommodation information until after I had begun the tour (another red flag). The tour operator cited the fact I had requested a date change and as a result accommodation options were limited, given I was taking the tour at a peak time. As to the veracity of this claim, I am uncertain, given I was able to find premium accommodation at very cheap prices at the time of my stay on oyorooms.com. Which left me wondering why then I was given for large part subpar accommodation.

The tour offered two different options with accommodation: two stars and three stars. This appeared to be based on a local system of measurement, and as a foreigner I was not certain what each entailed nor what to expect. I selected the two star option anyway. Whatever two star was supposed to represent, the reality it would appear was average to poor. During the tour I experienced at various times unclean, unrenovated/poorly renovated rooms, intermittent to no hot water, stained sheets with cigarette hole burns, super slow WiFi, roaches, noisy shared spaces and no sound insulation, discourteous, intrusive and sometimes outright rude service, no toilet paper, linen, coat hangers etc. and limited English service. At two different hotels I asked to be given a quiet room, and in both instances they gave me a room directly underneath their restaurant. Day and night I could hear the loud scraping of patron’s chairs through the ceiling. One of the rooms appeared to have been abandoned halfway through renovations. It was missing a toilet seat, light fixtures, a ceiling fan and contained two locked closets (none which I could actually use) and a luggage case containing (presumably) the management's belongings. I found a used towel and someone's underwear hanging off the back of the door. When I complained to a staff member that my bed sheet was dirty, he insisted that it was clean and that the dark splotches were just tea stains. I had to insist he change the sheet. He removed the sheet and folded it up, evidently with the intention of reusing it.

In one city I was made to stay at horrendous budget hotel which was comparable with a backpacker hostel. It only offered hot water at one time of the day but even then I never seemed to get any of it. Another hotel (the plushest of them all) turned out to have atrocious management. One night I had friend I made during a sightseeing trip join me at the hotel restaurant for a meal. The waiter inquired about whether he was a guest at the hotel. Afterwards the friend departed via the reception and I returned to my room. At 11.20pm the same waiter shows up at my door quizzing me about whether my friend had left. I rang management to inquire as to why such an intrusion was necessary given reception staff had seen him depart. Never heard back from him. The following morning I experienced yet another breach of etiquette. After taking my bags down to the restaurant to order my breakfast, one of the hotel staff approached me mid-meal to ask for the key, hours before my official check-out time. Seemed like the staff really could have benefited from some basic etiquette training.

Guides were functional but few offered particularly insightful services. One only spoke basic English and in some cases couldn’t understand many simple questions (e.g. "What was the name of the fort we just left?"). In many cases I would’ve been better going with the monument's audio guides (sometimes included in the ticket price). Moreover, most of the guides providing the barest minimum information about the monuments visited, many did not even know the itinerary (and failed to take me to some of the listed sites) and yet still they expected tips. My operator advised me they were paid according to government standards and that tips were not in fact required. Which made me wonder why he failed to inform his employees of this fact. One even went out of their way to try to shame and intimidate me into paying him a tip, standing over me and refusing to leave after the end of the tour, then complaining about my apparent stinginess. Worse still, it seemed the norm for some guides to pressure guests into visiting places not on the itinerary, where you would be hassled by people trying to sell you local souvenirs. One guide insisted on taking me to two such places - a textile centre and a jewellers - where I was immediately set upon by half-a-dozen money-hungry sales representatives. No doubt they earned commission as a result but really this was really inappropriate behaviour.

The main perk of this tour I would say was having a private car ferrying you from one place to another. I have no complaints about this aspect of the service, save that my driver once tried convincing me not to visit a place listed on the itinerary on the basis of it being too far away, despite the fact we had plenty of time to visit it and otherwise had no excuse not to. I had to resort to threatening to speak to the operator if the driver refused to fulfil his duty in this regard, at which point he relented. He also made the point of stopping the car by the side of the road on the way to the airport on the final day, pointing to the segment on my itinerary that says "no tips included" and then detailing in length how much he had done for me, claiming he had been at my service "24 hours" (not true). He then openly expressed his angry disapproval at the tip offered, which a local tourist guide friend told me was in fact more than sufficient. Apparently being a foreigner meant everyone expected you to be wealthy and therefore inclined to tip twice the standard amount. But really, the ingratitude was deeply embarrassing.

The extra activities (camel ride, elephant ride, boat ride) were pedestrian affairs and could not even be described as an experience. The elephant ride involved a circuit of the rundown mahout camp. The camel ride was a 25 minute loop across the sand dunes at snail's pace. The boat ride took you to a largely featureless island in a lake then back again.

By the end of this tour I was left with a feeling of having been shafted. For almost $2000 (AUD) - twice the "Indian" price listed on the operator's sister website Travel ChaCha - this tour did not for me (and according to the price estimates of my local tour guide friend) represent value for money. I am not sure where that money went but it certainly was not reflected in the quality of the tour. In hindsight I think it was designed for domestic tourists with markedly different expectations and the price bump was really just reflective of the whole Indian price/foreigner price custom. But it seems to me that if you are going to offer a service for foreigners, you should at least strive to accomodate standard expectations in terms of quality of service and accommodation. And just importantly, train your staff to treat them with a bit more respect and not as a cash-grab.

Save yourself the heartache and the hassle and don't give your money to this tour operator.